Coffee and the environment

Climate change / Rainforest Alliance

First Rainforest Alliance climate-friendly coffee farm(s)

(Updated) Finca Platanillo in San Marcos, western Guatemala is the first coffee farm to be verified by Rainforest Alliance (RA) for compliance with the Climate Module of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN, the standards-setting organization for RA). Less than a week later, it was announced that the well-known Daterra Estate in Minas Gerias, Brazil became the second farm to earn the verification.

I first reported on RA’s plan to develop this module in 2008. It isn’t a certification, but a voluntary add-on to RA certifcation. The module isn’t intended to indicate that a farm is carbon-neutral, or participates in carbon offsets, and doesn’t measure carbon stocks on farms.* The module’s goal is to encourage farmers to assess their climate risks, analyze their greenhouse gas emissions, maintain or increase carbon stocks on their lands (via habitat preservation or restoration), and identify best management practices to help them adapt to future climate change.

Verification occurs if farms comply with 80% of the 15 voluntary criteria of the module. Failure doesn’t effect the compliance score of regular RA certification. Farms can have the Climate Module audit done at the same time as their regular audit for RA certification; thus, it incurs no additional costs.

Finca Platanillo is 350 ha, of which nearly 40 are set aside as a protected area (although the ANACAFE site lists the area as 303 ha, of which 296 are cultivated). The finca grows bourbon, caturra, and catuai varieties at about 1150 to 1450 m; their maragogype is currently being offered by a number of roasters in Europe. In 2007, Finca Platanillo was one of the top-scoring farms in RA’s Cupping for Quality competition.

We reviewed several of Daterra’s coffees and provided background in this post. Daterra was also the first Rainforest Alliance-certified estate in Brazil (it consists of more than one farm). You can read more about the broad range of their long-standing sustainability efforts on their web site.

*RA and its partners have also worked on developing a guide for farmers on how to measure and verify carbon stored on coffee farms to enable producers to receive payments for carbon credits. See this post for details and a link to the guide.

Climate change / Coffee regions / Research on coffee growing

Climate change threatens east African coffee via borers

Some like it hot: The influence and implications of climate change on coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) and coffee production in east Africa. Jaramillo et al. 2011. PLoS One.

An important new paper published this week outlines the threat posed by the expansion of coffee berry borers in east Africa due to climate change.

This paper follows up research by the authors that was published in 2009. That paper looked at life history characteristics of the coffee berry borer (CBB), one of the worst pests of coffee, and how they might react to various climate change scenarios. This paper built on that data, looked at current distribution of CBB in east Africa, and modeled the change in distribution by 2050 based on two climate change scenarios.

The models indicated that CBB infestation will be worse in the arabica coffee producing regions of Ethiopia; the Ugandan part of the Lake Victoria and Mt. Elgon regions; Mt. Kenya, particularly in the coffee-producing areas of Embu and Meru, and the western part of Kenya, around Kitale and the Kenyan aide of Mt. Elgon; and most of Rwanda and Burundi. Further, it appears that increasing temperatures will likely double the number of generations of CBB per year in all current arabica-producing areas. Both models (using slightly different projections of climate change) are very similar, one figure is reproduced below.

Suitability of climate for CBB, year 2050. EI values indicate suitability, where 0 is unsuitable, and 100 is perfect. Click to enlarge. From Jaramillo et al. 2011.

Lest you view climate modeling (or climate change) with skepticism, the authors note that as recently as ten years ago, CBB were not reported above 1500 m. Now, due to increasing temperatures in coffee growing regions around the world, CBB can be found at higher altitudes, where arabica coffee is typically grown. CBB have been documented 300 m higher in Tanzania than they were ten years ago. The authors note that some of the changes predicted in their earlier paper, such as increased number of generations and broader distribution, seem to already be occurring.

The damage an increase in CBB to now-untouched coffee growing areas is serious and sobering. These impacts do not even incorporate other changes that are likely to take place with increasing temperatures: a change in the distribution of biological enemies of CBB, and the impact of changes in rainfall patterns, disrupted seasonality, and thermal stress to coffee plants.

The authors state,

We suggest that the best way to adapt to a rise of temperatures in coffee plantations could be via the introduction of shade trees in sun grown plantations.

They note adding shade trees can lead to a decrease in the temperature around coffee berries by up to 4°C, which in turn may reduce the rate of increase in CBB by 34%.  They go on to say shade coffee agroecosystems can serve as a refuge for beneficial arthropods, leading to higher levels of biological control of CBB, and they create a diversified and therefore more resilient system that will perform better under climate change. They conclude that while it is only one of many adaptation strategies, the use of shade trees is “… rational, affordable, and relatively easy for coffee farmers and other stakeholders to implement.”

The paper is open access, and you can read it the whole thing and view all the maps here. A link to an abstract in Spanish is available near the end.

Jaramillo, J., Muchugu, E., Vega, F., Davis, A., Borgemeister, C., & Chabi-Olaye, A. (2011). Some Like It Hot: The Influence and Implications of Climate Change on Coffee Berry Borer (Hypothenemus hampei) and Coffee Production in East Africa PLoS ONE, 6 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024528

Climate change

Two degrees up

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) produced a series of short films on what a changing climate could mean for farming communities in East and West Africa, and South America. The segment below is the impact on coffee producers in Colombia — not only what changing climate could mean, but what it does mean already.




This film is also available in Spanish. The other films in the series chronicle land conflict and rural displacement in Ghana and water scarcity in Kenya.

Climate change

Mitigating climate change with coffee

The Decision and Policy Analysis (DAPA) Program of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) recently released results from a research project on mitigating climate change in Mesoamerican coffee production. You can download a PDF of the report, The Potential of Mesoamerican Coffee Production Systems to Mitigate Climate Change. This document is actually the thesis project of a Dutch student. The paper is a straightforward look at the how different shade coffee systems store carbon and their levels of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as how a few certifications (organic, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ Certified) influence those metrics.

Here are two slides from a presentation to whet your appetite (click to enlarge).

Traditional rustic shade has a larger carbon footprint than commercial polyculture because yields are lower per unit area, and all the contributing factors are allocated to less product. Note that biomass (below 0 on x-axis) denotes “credit” subtracted from factors that add to the carbon footprint.

Certifications other than organic don’t do much to reduce carbon footprint over conventional farming, suggesting that standards need to be modified to encourage footprint-lowering practices. Note that biomass (below 0 on x-axis) denotes “credit” subtracted from factors that add to the carbon footprint.

For an explanation of these interesting graphs take a look at the full report.  While it is over 100 pages, it is not a difficult read and I especially encourage people to take a look at page 68, which outlines coffee production practices that result in lowered greenhouse gas emissions, and page 70, which gives overall conclusions.